Face-to-face contact durations at scientific events follow a heavy-tailed distribution, with 20-second contacts most common¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2026: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Cumulated face-to-face contact durations measured by RFID badges were heavily skewed, with 20-second contacts most frequent and contact duration not normally distributed. → Eberle 2021

Evidence¶

Eberle 2021¶

Eberle, J., Stegmann, K., Barrat, A., Fischer, F., & Lund, K. (2021). Initiating scientific collaborations across career levels and disciplines – a network analysis on behavioral data. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-021-09345-7

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Descriptive analysis of 1,436 RFID-captured face-to-face contacts across workshops; the article notes this pattern "has been found for face-to-face contact duration measured with RFID badges in previous studies". Printed medians ranged from 1.00 to 7.83 minutes across workshops.

"The cumulated duration of face-to-face contacts follows a heavy-tailed distribution and is neither normally nor exponentially distributed. Instead, shorter face-to-face contacts are more common with 20 second durations being the most observed face-to-face contact durations, and longer contacts being increasingly rarer."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Longer face-to-face contact during a scientific event increases the likelihood that a researcher selects the other as a new potential collaboration partner — related
• Transitivity, reciprocity and contact duration are relevant for researchers' identification of new potential collaboration partners at face-to-face events, as the editorial reports of Eberle et al. — related